


Never The Same Way Twice

by TheSecretValley



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Her name is Adahlen'inan, Lavellan POV - Freeform, Post-Trespasser, though not for much longer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:11:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5075557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSecretValley/pseuds/TheSecretValley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can pinpoint, with the exacting precision carved into her nature, the moment that she fell in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never The Same Way Twice

She can pinpoint, with the exacting precision carved into her nature, the moment that she fell in love with him.

They had flirted before, cautiously, something they both seemed naturally inclined towards. He was keeping secrets from them. She could feel it in the gaze he leveled across the horizon, in the weighty silence he held sometimes. The same silence she held. The same as Blackwall. Let him keep them, she thought. She knew the weight of secrets.

How wrong she had been. Still young, after everything.

The fresco he was painting on the walls of the rotunda had hardly been a secret from her. She had been aware of the requisitions he had put in for materials, of the time he had taken to contemplate the design, of the frantic rush as he hurried to complete the work before it was ruined. She had not expected, as she walked into the circular room after a particularly long and grueling trip to the Hinterlands, to see her own story spilling across the walls in great sweeping shapes and bold lines. 

Her thoughts had ground to a sudden halt, her footsteps, usually silent, startling her with the noise they made on the stone floor. He had noticed, and called a quiet greeting, but the ability to respond had passed far beyond her reach at that point.

In retrospect, it was a rather embarrassing reaction.

She had stared. Traced the backs of wolves, met the eye of the Inquisition head on: she was the Inquisitor now, and wasn't that a twist of fate to laugh at, more so than anyone else would ever know. There was nobody left to tell her secrets, after all.

He had made this for her.

Until that moment, that realization, she had thought she had known what love felt like. Now she knew better: it was never the same. The circumstances are different; the people involved are, usually, different. She herself was different. This had not occurred to her before, that the changes to her nature that she had so carefully cultivated might change the way that she felt love. Apparently they turned her into a wordless fool.

The loss of words had frightened her, and she had fled, much to his confusion and alarm.

She thinks back on those frescoes now, left abandoned with Skyhold, the final panel ruined, unfinished. Never to be completed. If it had, it would have fed back into the first panel, where the Breach rent the sky once more and demons rained upon the land. No wonder he had left it unfinished, the message far too accurate to be an accident. Not from him.

He still visits her dreams, and she aches. It tires her to see him, but she wishes he would never leave. The hurt follows her into her waking hours, makes her quieter, more contemplative than ever before. 

Pain, too, is different every time.

He had told her to find what joy there was left, but there was none left to her. The Inquisition gone, her friends scattered (not that they wouldn't welcome her to come with them, but she cannot see herself in any of the places they belong. Except for Blackwall, perhaps, but his quest is better suited to someone less heavy with sorrow) and he will not be with her. So she is leaving. In the end she always leaves. She must hope that the things she has set in motion will not falter without her. She must hope that a way will be found to save him. He will not let her do it herself.


End file.
